Tag Archive: Harrison Ford

It’s that time of year again, time to take a look forward at what movies should be on your radar for 2019. Are you going to see them all? Heck no. These are the genre films we think borg readers will want to know about to make their own checklists for the coming year–and they are only the films we know about so far. We pulled 78 of the hundreds of films that have been finalized or are in varying stages of final production, slated for next year’s movie calendar.

What looks to top the list for most fanboys and fangirls? The last of the nine films in theStar Wars saga. Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far From Home.Shazam!is DC’s contribution. Quentin Tarentino returns to movies to direct Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Martin Scorcese is back with an all-star cast in The Irishman (on Netflix). M. Night Shyamalan finishes his dark superhero trilogy with Glass. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton return in Terminator. Jordan Peele is back with another horror film with Us.

Do you like sequels? This is your year. Another Men in Black, X-Men, Shaft, Happy Death Day, Lego Movie, Hellboy, John Wick, Kingsman, Jumanji, The Secret Life of Pets, How to Train Your Dragon, Fast and the Furious, Zombieland, Addams Family, Charlie’s Angels, Godzilla, Shaun the Sheep, Annabelle,and Stephen King’s It and Pet Sematary—Disney is trying to get you to move into your local theater with another Toy Story, Aladdin, Dumbo, Frozen, and Lion King–all in one year. Yep, lots and lots of sequels are coming.

It’s not every day you come across the ultimate book for your barber shop, but this is in the running. Along with a wall listing current local pro and college team scores and a stack of wrinkled sports magazines, a new book about Stan Smith should be on the table if your local haircut joint is like mine. Who would have thought a style of shoe could reach across so many segments of pop culture? Excepting basketball player Chuck Taylor’s association with the Converse All Stars shoe and Doc Martens’ famous boots, the Adidas tennis shoe (not sneaker, not trainer) that Smith put his name on is easily one of the most identifiable athletic shoes of the past five decades. Smith and his shoes, known simply as “Stan Smiths” to most, have had a mutually beneficial relationship, and everything you’d want to know about the professional tennis player and his shoe can be found in the new book Stan Smith: Some People Think I’m a Shoe, a collection of stories about the athlete who was the world’s #1 tennis player in 1971 and 1972 and a two-time Grand Slam singles champion–and his famous shoe.

It’s said to be the shoe Harrison Ford wore as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner–a pair of Stan Smiths spray-painted black. From The Beatles to hip hop, the unassuming white shoe with green trim and perforated lines instead of stripes has been a preferred accessory across popular music icons. David Bowie and John Lennon made their own statements wearing Smith’s tennis shoe with their otherwise more stylish clothes. They were a regular sight among The Beastie Boys years later, Jay-Z included them in lyrics to one of his songs, and custom Kylie Minogue, Pharrel Williams, and Elton John versions of the shoe sold for big bucks at auction. The shoe went through technology upgrades over time, but it has always remained instantly recognizable. An A to Z section of Stan Smith: Some People Think I’m a Shoe includes anecdotes from Smith from his trips around the world, history of the shoe from the decision by Smith to endorse the Adidas Haillet–the first leather tennis shoe invented in 1963–with his own name ten years after its creation, to Smith’s current status as mentor, coach, and philanthropist. The hardcover volume with 336 pages of full color photographs feature Smith’s life, newspaper coverage of his key games, pop culture personalities and how they were affected by either Smith or the shoe, and dozens of versions, schematics, and designs that Adidas has introduced to the Stan Smith shoe since 1973.

The book is also a look at a long-lasting advertising idea, an endorsement that created an artifact of sub-culture tapped as a symbol of identity by Baby Boomers to Millennials, eclipsing a wide range of fields of celebrity. The book reflects the art of self-promotion, including commentary from executives from Adidas past and present plus execs at places like PepsiCo, as well as artists and designers influenced by the shoe–the book itself is a promotion for the continuing sales of the shoe. One commenter believes you’ll find more Stan Smiths on the streets of Paris than berets. And it was added to the Guinness Book of World Records as the top-selling “named” shoe when it surpassed 22 million pairs sold. The book interviews one fan who boasts 230 pairs in his home. Former tennis pro Martina Navratilova wears Stan Smiths everywhere today. According to a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, “The magic of the Stan Smith shoe is that it can pass as a normal sneaker but also be used as a dressed-up shoe to a black tie event.” Some people even seek out beaten-up pairs of the shoe because they think they look better.

Coming in at about the same price as the actor’s screen-used prop blaster from Return of the Jedi this summer (discussed here at borg), Harrison Ford proved again he is #1 among pop culture and entertainment memorabilia collectors. At Prop Store‘s entertainment memorabilia live auction in London yesterday, called Treasures from Film and Television (which we previewed from San Diego Comic-Con here in July), one of the fedoras worn by ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark brought record bids for a prop from the franchise, taking in an estimate of between $522,500 and $558,000, including fees and taxes. Ford’s Han Solo blaster sold in June for $550,000 (before tax). The hammer price for the hat was £320,000 when the winning bid was placed and the hammer struck, or about $424,755. Provenance for this hat was not provided by Prop Store in its catalog, but the company said it could be screen-matched through identifying marks to several key scenes in the movie. An Indy bullwhip from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom sold for $74,460, including buyer’s premium, at the auction.

One of the other auction lots worn by Ford was supposed to be the crown jewel of the auction, a simple stylized blue jacket worn in The Empire Strikes Back said to have been screen-matched to the film’s Cloud City scenes. Although it was expected to garner $660,000 to $1.3 million, bidders were just not willing to push bids past the $600,000 mark and the seller’s minimum reserve price. The jacket was one of the only hero costume pieces from the original trilogy to be offered at public auction.

This week’s big star prop of the Prop Store auction was crowded among other Hollywood props on display at San Diego Comic-Con this past July.

Several other key props from the four corners of genredom sold in excess of six figures (including buyer’s premium and net of taxes) in yesterday’s auction. A light-up T-800 endoskeleton from Terminator II: Judgment Day (1991) fetched a massive price of $326,500. A Christopher Reeve costume from Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980) sold for $212,200. A Hayden Christensen Anakin Skywalker lightsaber from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (2005) sold for $180,000 and an Ian McDiarmid Emperor lightsaber from the film sold for $114,000. A background First Order Stormtrooper helmet from Star Wars: The Last Jedi surprised everyone, selling for a whopping $180,000. A Johnny Depp costume from Edward Scissorhands (1990) sold for $106,100. Of several original comic book art pages that sold, the star was Page 15 from The Amazing Spider-Man (1966), Issue #32, by artist Steve Ditko, which fetched $155,000.

More than two dozen other memorable props and costumes from sci-fi, fantasy, superhero, and horror classics fared well (prices quoted include pre-tax conversion from British pound, including buyer’s premium):Continue reading →

The hero of the Rebellion and the Resistance and rescuer of the galaxy more than once, one of fandom’s favorites is featured in his own book in November. Insight Editions announced Star Wars Icons: Han Solo will be a comprehensive look at the creation and legacy of one of Star Wars’ most beloved characters. Covering the Han Solo’s journey from his genesis in George Lucas’s first Star Wars drafts to his portrayal by Harrison Ford in the original trilogy and The Force Awakens to his rebirth in Solo: A Star Wars Story, and beyond the films to his role in the Star Wars expanded universe: novels, comics, video games, and more–Insight promises this will be the definitive book for every Han Solo fan.

You can pre-order what we expect to be the first of several Star Wars Icons books, Star Wars Icons: Han Solo now here at Amazon (at a discount off the cover price). And don’t forget to lock-in the pre-order price for Solo: A Star Wars Story on DVD, Digital HD, and Blu-ray here.

Last weekend Julien’s Auctions sold an original Star Wars prop at a price that puts it among the highest prices ever for the public sale of a Star Wars movie prop, and it’s not going to be the last time you see it, like you’d find with most auction sales. We have covered previous auctions here at borg.com for higher selling items (like the original Robby the Robot last November that sold for $5.375 million), and this latest prop didn’t catch up with the pieced together R2-D2 that sold at Profiles in History’s auction last June for $2.76 million, but it’s still impressive. This time it was a Han Solo non-firing prop blaster from Return of the Jedi that resulted in the auction’s big win. It sold at $550,000, which included the auction house “kicker” or buyer’s premium of a hefty $100,000. The winning bidder? Ripley’s Believe it or Not, which added this to their Star Wars collection that already included a Luke Skywalker lightsaber said to have been used in The Empire Strikes Back, purchased last year at auction for $450,000. With most auction lots landing in private hands never to see daylight again, this is a rare instance where fans may get a chance to see this on display in person.

No other franchise touches Star Wars when it comes to auction prices paid for screen-used memorabilia, and the cream of the crop has been props associated with named characters. Pieces of Star Wars costumes, some associated with the bankrupt Planet Hollywood chain, have sold at auction over the years, mostly incomplete, including a Chewbacca mask (for $120,000 in 2007 at Profiles in History), Darth Vader components (like a mask, for $115,000 plus premium, at Profiles in History in 2003), C-3PO parts (like his head, for $120,000 in a 2008 profiles in history auction), multiple Imperial troopers, Princess Leia’s slave outfit from Return of the Jedi (for $96,000 at Profiles in History in 2015), and the aforementioned R2-D2. Screen-used models also have fetched a hefty sum, including the filming miniature model of the Rebel Blockade Runner spaceship from the opening scene of the original Star Wars that sold for $465,000, and a miniature filming model of a TIE Fighter that sold for more than $400,000.

Another Han Solo blaster, a prop weapon that fired blanks unlike the Julien’s prop but was also from Return of the Jedi, sold as part of the Stembridge Armory Collection back in 2007 for $201,600. The Julien’s blaster had the distinction of being owned by Return of the Jedi art director James Schoppe, the kind of provenance high-end collectors flock toward. Another Luke Skywalker lightsaber, from the original Star Wars, authenticated by producer Gary Kurtz, sold in 2005 at Profiles in History for $200,600.

A few hours ago Lucasfilm released a new, very long trailer for Solo: A Star Wars Story. If you’re not already all-in for this next Star Wars adventure, this may get you there. Lucasfilm also released a new, retro style movie poster. But be forewarned: We’re getting to the point in the cycle of a coming summer blockbuster where Hollywood starts showing audiences too much of the film. So if you have the patience, you may want to move along. It’s doubtful any major spoilers are given away in this trailer, but it seems likely we’ve had a peek at at least 90% of the key environments in the film already.

What? You’re still here?

If you’re like us, you can soak in all the Star Wars goodness as Disney & Co. is willing to serve it up, spoilers be damned. The most exciting bit from this new look is Chewbacca. We hoped and expected he would be key to this film, and so far it seems director Ron Howard is going to deliver on that expectation. The other bit of note is Donald Glover’s assimilation of Billy Dee Williams’ performance from The Empire Strikes Back as Lando Calrissian, his summoning of all that cool from the actor now frequenting conventions across the country, his transmografication into the suave character we want to see. Everyone else looks great, too, including new Han Solo, Alden Ehrenreich. If you don’t think he evokes Harrison Ford, so what? Consider if you’d seen this Solo movie in chronological order, before 1977. From the trailers Ehrenreich’s entry into the franchise seems more like Mark Hamill’s back in 1977. We hadn’t heard of Hamill either, yet the unknown actor jumped in nicely to lead the way in the new galaxy, far, far away.

So get ready, if you dare, for the next dive into the past world of Star Wars in this new trailer from Solo: A Star Wars Story:

It’s been one long year of great entertainment. Before we wrap our coverage of 2017, it’s time for the fifth annual round of new honorees for the borg Hall of Fame. We have plenty of honorees from 2017 films, plus many from past years, and a peek at some from the future. You can always check out the updated borg Hall of Fame on our home page under “Know your borg.”

In anticipation of the 2017 film Logan, last year we added Old Man Logan, Laura/X-23, and cyborg-armed mercenary Donald Pierce. We also added Scarlet Johansson’s character The Major, previewing 2017’s live-action film The Ghost in the Shell.

We didn’t get the big ballroom at our venue reserved early enough for the induction ceremony this year, so it limited us to tapping only 24 named characters into the revered Hall of Fame this year.

As with last year, we’re granting a few early entrances this year, first to Simone Missick’s badass cop Misty Knight, who is getting a borg arm for season two of Luke Cage in 2018.

And here is an early look at Josh Brolin’s Cable, from 2018’s Deadpool sequel. The borg comic book character Cable was a first round honoree to the Hall, so this is just another update to the character.

Onto this year… Kingsman’s almost-a-Kingsman Charlie was thought to have been killed off in the first film. But he was back in the 2017 film Kingsman: The Golden Circle, sporting cyborg components.

A host of new borgs–Replicants in Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?–returned to the big screen in Blade Runner 2049, including some new names and faces, like Ryan Gosling’s K …

When we created last year’s preview of 2017 movies we were pretty sure we were going to have some great movies this year, but we were surprised by what ended up being the best. All year we tried to keep up with what Hollywood had to offer and honed in on the genre content we thought was worth examining. We went back and looked at it all and pulled together our picks for our borg.com annual Best Movies of 2017.

As always, we’re after the best genre content of 2017–with our top categories from the Best in Movies. There are thousands of other places that cover plain vanilla dramas and the rest, but here we’re looking for movies we want to watch. What do all of this year’s selections have in common? In addition to those elements that define each genre, each has a good story. Special effects without a good story is not good entertainment, and we saw plenty of films this year that missed that crucial element.

Come back later this week for our TV and print media picks, and our annual borg.com Hall of Fame inductees. Wait no further, here are our picks for 2017:

Best Sci-Fi Fix, Best Sci-fi Movie, Best Costume Design – Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. The Valerian and Laureline comic books turned 50 and brought a big-screen adaptation to theaters. Director Luc Besson handled the material as a labor of love, and that could be marveled at in every scene, and each nook and cranny of the gigantic visual spectacle he created. More new wonders, more futuristic ideas that had never been seen on film before, bold otherworldly costumes, and incredible special effects made this film a masterpiece science fiction fans will stumble upon in the future and wonder how it was so overlooked by audiences this summer. Epic space battles, aliens, and loads of sci-fi technology, while all the other science fiction of the year kept to their familiar territories. A gripping story about a team just doing their job, but that job is saving an entire race of a doomed planet. Besson was going for something like Avatar, but he far surpassed it. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets was everything a sci-fi fan could want.

Best Fantasy Fix, Best Fantasy Movie, Best Comedy Movie – Thor: Ragnarok. As much as Thor: Ragnarok was a natural progression for Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk, it was amazing how much the film busted genres, becoming more of a Flash Gordon space fantasy like the Guardians of the Galaxy movies than the rest of the Avengers series. Just like watching classic Flash Gordon and Conan movies, we saw superheroes on a legendary hero’s journey rise and encounter obstacles and make sacrifices, across a landscape of fabulous worlds and colorful characters, and scenes that looked like they were ripped out of your favorite Jack Kirby comic pages. Another film about family, it incorporated that always fun plot device of having good guy and bad guy join forces, as Tom Hiddleston’s Loki redeemed himself with his brother and their people, if only temporarily. We met one of the fiercest warriors in Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie and they all faced off against a trio of well-developed villains. A great superhero story, too, this was the ultimate fantasy fix.

Best Superhero Fix, Best Superhero Movie, Best Easter Eggs – The LEGO Batman Movie. Even as a spoof of superhero movies and the DC Universe, The LEGO Batman Movie created a genuine story full of heart that any fan of comic books could love. Will Arnett became our second favorite Batman actor this year behind Michael Keaton, and his Batman reminded us why we can’t wait for the DC Universe to get fun and exciting again. Hilarious, laugh-out-loud funny with a smart script, full of derring-do and super-powered heroics, and better than this year’s and the last decade of live-action DC at the movies, the animated The LEGO Batman Movie proved more good DC movies are out there just waiting to be made. Honorable mention: Spider-man: Homecoming.

Best Retro Fix – Classic Genre Films Return to Theaters. With all the new releases in 2017 we were lucky enough to witness the 90th anniversary of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, while Disney’s The Jungle Book, The Dirty Dozen, and the original Casino Royale turned 50. Along with Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind turned 40. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Blade Runner, Tron, and The Dark Crystal turned 35. Predator, The Princess Bride, and Robocop turned 30. Many of these made it back into theaters this year, giving us the best Retro Fix we could hope for all year long. But E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan(we even interviewed the best Star Trek director of them all here this year), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Princess Bride, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, on the big screen over only a few weeks? We can only hope for more in 2018!

Check out the rest of the year’s Best Film and the rest of our picks for the year’s best movies, after the cut…

Credit for the success of Blade Runner 2049 as a worthy sequel to 1982’s Blade Runner is a shared prize for director Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Sicario), the writers, including screenwriter Michael Green (Logan, Alien: Covenant), source material creator Philip K. Dick, and original Blade Runner screenwriter Hampton Fancher (The Mighty Quinn), plus at least two dozen other unnamed creators whose early science fiction works were mined for the story. Predictable, derivative, slow-paced, and overly long, Blade Runner 2049 still lands as a solid sequel and will no doubt please fans loyal to the 1982 film. The beauty of the sequel is the earnest, ambitious effort of Villeneuve under the eye of executive producer and original Blade Runner director Ridley Scott to give the story a reserved touch. The sequel has the now classic dystopian look of the Mad Max or Terminator: Salvation variety, stretching the original Syd Mead futurism and punk noir vibe into a different but logical new direction–think Blade Runner with the lights turned on.

From the first scene Villeneuve & Co. dig in to not just sci-fi tropes but cyborg heavy themes that sci-fi fans know very well from similar explorations in countless books, television series, and films since the early 1980s, when the idea of adapting something like Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? into a big budget film was something less familiar to film audiences. The filmmakers touch on many classics–Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Pinocchio, Shakespearean tragedy–to countless episodes of the Star Trek franchise (lead character and Replicant K/Joe played by Ryan Gosling revisits several direct themes the android Data explored in Star Trek: The Next Generation). More than ten minutes is spent revisiting the latest technology called an “emanator” that Star Trek Voyager fans will be familiar with as the Emergency Medical Hologram’s “holo-emitter,” a device allowing holograms to move around the world. What in the early 1980s may have wowed audiences is here not so eye-popping because of the legacy Trek tech called the holodeck. But none of these flashbacks to sci-fi’s past really takes anything away from the elements re-used in Blade Runner 2049 because they are all stitched together into a clean story. To some it will be a Where’s Waldo? of sci-fi storytelling and to others the simple nostalgia of exploring Isaac Asimov’s themes of the Robot and the Self will be worth a revisit.

Many questions are asked in the lengthy 2 hour-and 43 minute-long film, and some, but not all, will be answered, disappointing a few loyal fans of the original. Deaths of characters and actors since the original limit the return of certain characters from the original, but where they happen it’s done right. One scene, however, is a complete misfire–a character walked onto the screen to the gasp of this reviewer’s theater audience, only to find it wasn’t really who was expected based on the build up of the scene. But the biggest misfire is Villeneuve’s use of sound and score. Villeneuve turned to Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer for the musical score, unfortunately creating a dreadful use of sound in the film, compared to the original film’s excellent score by Vangelis. Where the use of Vangelis’s synthesized cautious, futuristic melodies took a backseat to story and dialogue in the original, here Wallfisch and Zimmer lean on dissonant John Cage-esque chords and blare noises like someone sitting on a piano or a kid plugging his guitar into an amp for the first time, over and over, at full volume–the aural equivalent of J.J. Abrams’ lens flares. The poor sound takes away from a visual work that could have benefitted from a closer look at the use of sound in the original. I.e. take at least one earplug along, especially in an IMAX or other digital theater.

Yes, the celebration of the movies of 1982 just keeps getting better. As Blade Runner turns 35, Warner Bros. has partnered with Alamo Drafthouse theaters to present a new 4K restoration of Blade Runner: The Final Cut. You thought you saw the final version of Ridley Scott’s original vision with the 2007 version? Well you did, primarily. Blade Runner: The Final Cut was in theaters only briefly then it was issued in several home variations. The Final Cut featured restored and re-mastered original elements, plus added and extended scenes, added dialogue, along with new and improved special effects. The version returning to theaters for the Alamo Drafthouse event updates the 2007 film version with 4K resolution, promising a more immersive theatrical experience than seen before.

All told, Blade Runner is one of the most modified and re-released films around. The Final Cut was the eighth edition of the loose adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi classic novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and this new edition is basically the same as 2007 with a sound and picture upgrade. Does that make it the ninth version? That depends on who you ask. The biggest difference between the original and the earlier director’s cut was the elimination of Harrison Ford’s narration, Philip Marlowe style. If you’re a fan of classic noir like we are, you really missed the narration in the later editions from the original theatrical release–that narration gave a nice retro feel in contrast to such a darkly futuristic film. Legal entanglements, cuts for TV and DVD, and more, and a resolution or two later and here we are with this new upgrade.

Leading up to the October 6 release of the long-awaited–unlikely–sequel, Blade Runner 2049, Warner Bros. is releasing a 35th anniversary edition home release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut, coming September 5, including director commentary. You can pre-order the Ultra HD Blu-ray Combo Pack and Digital here at Amazon now.